Talent Management in the Great Realignment

Original article published on Linkedin by Dustin Lanier, CPPO

I'm facilitating a conversation about "Talent Management in the Great Realignment." Let's break that topic into its two core parts, and then look ahead into the discussion:

Talent Management

Attracting and retaining staff has become one of the most critical responsibilities of any organizational leader right now - public or private, higher education or government:

Attract: 

• Can we create a buzz about our organization that will make the highly qualified candidate curious?
• Do we know the market ranges for compensation in the market through a review of similar postings?
• Is the type of work I am going to advertise to the market going to speak to today's jobseeker?

Retain:

• Can all of the boxes on the staff chart see and experience the mission of the organization?
• Where is burnout putting the most pressure on staff, and is there any way to proactively manage it?
• Can each person have opportunities for new experiences within the organization, instead of leaving to find them?

Great Realignment

The extensive career change explosion since the waning days of the pandemic was originally referred to as the Great Resignation. And there certainly was a lot of resigning happening - the following graphic shows "job quits" over the last 20 years, with 2021 in orange, and you can see the reality pretty plainly:

But "Great Resignation" kind of buries the headline - these people by and large aren't quitting to walk the Appalachian Trail. 

The pandemic era drove self-reflection on personal priorities and life goals, and if work was not copacetic with both, then people said "I'm not coming back." Service industries are still facing enormous challenges with staffing, for example. Closer to the public sector, I recently linked a March 2022 report that found that while the private sector has recovered more than 90 percent of jobs lost over the past two years, the public sector has only recovered 53 percent.

The first time I saw the "Great Realignment" was an article by Dr. Kirstin Ferguson about six months ago as a commentary on the fact that people were "assessing life goals and work identities." Since I read her article that's what I've been using as well.

In the interest of keeping this article brief and punchy, I will note a single final topic for public procurement, and the public sector in general - the patchwork of return to work expectations along with a new availability of competing jobs allowing for hybrid/remote work.  

This will be a source of continual disruption for government leaders throughout the year, and this should be a specific risk that you are watching and seeking to mitigate.